“Don’t be fooled, ‘prove your status’ makes us all Jean Rony” – Insight ‘The Tribune

Excerpt from this article; “The Social Media frenzy about the identity of Jena Rony Jean-Charles for him to ‘prove who he is’ promotes a serious threat to the presumption of innocence in The Bahamas.  Targeting Jean Rony puts everyone’s freedom and presumption of innocence at stake.  We are all potential Jean Ronys.

Jean Rony has committed no immigration nor other offence known to law.  Like most of us, he was “born” in The Bahamas and was exercising his constitutional right to move freely when he was falsely, illegally detained and expelled from the country.

This is a result of Fred Mitchell’s 2014 ‘Prove your status’ and ‘produce your papers’ upon demand policy.  Jean Rony was thereby presumed to be guilty of no known offense under the law.  Because Fred Mitchell (PLP) and now continuing with Brent Symonette (FNM), he was merely by policy, deemed born with original sin.

It can and will happen to any of us.”

First, let us dispel with the notion that Jean Rony Jean-Charles has committed no immigration nor other offense known to law; first he did not by our current immigration laws, apply for citizenship when he had reached the age of eighteen and thereby violated the spirit of not only the constitution but also immigration policy; the play with semantics now by Fred Smith only serves to further the divide with persons whom held some sort of empathy for his client as he now seeks to apply for citizenship.

As Jean-Rony applies for citizenship, a matter that should not be addressed until the whole issue of who he really is is cleared up, we must look at the fact that not only did Jean Rony attempt to perpetuate a fraud on the country by not applying for citizenship thereby living without the responsibility of being a contributing citizen; there is also the issue of him being in the criminal system when he himself admitted to being arrested for possession of marijuana, fined and jailed for a month, while seeking to claim he has violated “no immigration nor other offense”.  While this may be seen as a very minor offence, it should be considered when considering citizenship as now we already have a man lying to conceal two criminal acts.

No, Prime Minister Dr. Hubert Minnis nor Fred Mitchell or even myself do not need to prove that we are the persons that they are on our birth certificates because we all have documents in support of who were are; when arrested, detained and deported Mr. Jean Rony seemed unable to produce any documents attesting to who to exactly who he is and it seems to date that he is even unable to.

The recent attack by Fred Smith QC is nothing more than a ‘smoke screen’, in my opinion as he attempt to invoke the distain that American had for the “Papers Please” law of Arizona back in 2010 and I would ask him did this practice just become ‘wrong’ as his client’s future came to be in jeopardy due to the ‘shell-game’ which he attempted to play with the government and lost?

As Fred Smith seeks to further erode the sovereignty of the Commonwealth of The Bahamas with his asinine ‘hit and miss’ commentary’’ I would enquire of him how is he seeking to now help his client while playing this high stake chess game.

END